As most everyone knows, President Bush has now placed that dreadful label — “Terrorist!” — on the government of Iran — well, actually on a piece of the government. That’s the magic word that enables the U.S. government to attack, kill, torture, incarcerate, or destroy the recipient of the label. Unfortunately, it’s also the word that is almost guaranteed to get the knees a’knocking of many Americans, including adult men and women, causing them to support whatever bombs, missiles, torture, incarceration, destruction, and loss of liberty that comes with waging the “war on terrorism.”

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported yesterday “The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said he had no evidence Iran was working actively to build nuclear weapons and expressed concern that escalating rhetoric from the U.S. could bring disaster.”

But, hey, why let truth get in the way of another war of aggression? If the WMD/mushroom-cloud scare could be used to aggress against Iraq, why not use it again, this time against Iran? Anyway, surely President Bush can find people in the State Department and Pentagon who would be willing to issue a report or two stating that Iran is definitely about to fire nuclear weapons at the U.S. Surely he can get the CIA to leak some information from a “credible” secret source about Iran’s smoking nuclear guns to favored journalists in the mainstream press. If all else fails and WMDs are not found in Iran, Bush and his people could always say they’re just engaged in another round of “democracy-spreading,” a process in which killing hundreds of thousands of foreigners, including women and children, is considered “worth it” to U.S. officials.

It’s all enough to remind one of the words of Joseph Goebbels, the National Socialist Party’s propaganda chief:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” —Joseph Goebbels

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly — it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” —Joseph Goebbels

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that a war on Iran could have quite large adverse effects on the U.S., including more out-of-control federal spending, more crashing of the dollar, higher expenses at the grocery store and gas pump, retaliatory terrorist strikes, and increased deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

So, why would Bush do it? Because he knows that the Iraq invasion has produced an ongoing monumental debacle, including the installation of a pro-Iran regime and, now, the prospect of a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq. Bush knows that there is only one way out for the U.S. — an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq by withdrawing all U.S. forces from the country. But since Bush isn’t about to permit himself to be a president who started a war against a country that never attacked the United States and then “cut and run” from it, he might well conclude that his only hope is to double his bet (after driving the nation even more into hock) and throwing the dice in the desperate hope that a war on Iran would produce pro-U.S. regimes in both Iran and Iraq.

But if a war on Iran doesn’t work out well for Bush and the U.S., his throw of the dice could well be the swan song of the pro-empire, pro-intervention pro-militarist paradigm that has unfortunately held our nation in its grip for so long. As things stand now, increasing numbers of Americans are finally thinking about and reflecting on U.S. foreign policy. Another war of aggression — this time on Iran — might well focus people’s attention on the importance of restoring a limited-government republic to our land.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education.
He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at
LewRockwell.com and from
Full Context. Send him email.

Jacob G. Hornberger

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.